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About Me

I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles. See "Published Works" on the web version for citations.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Monday, March 09, 2015

A Short But Exciting Life

As Russia makes a play to be a major actor in the eastern Mediterranean, don't forget that the Black Sea bastion that Russia would need to sustain their effort in the Mediterranean is far more vulnerable to NATO even after the seizure and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.

But even if Russia has more capacity to force the Turkish straits than the Soviets had (or if Russia can turn Turkey away from NATO), NATO now has the geographic position to contest Russia's forces in the Black Sea:

A NATO flotilla arrived in the Black Sea on Wednesday to train with ships from the Bulgarian, Romanian and Turkish navies, the U.S.-led Western alliance said.

It is just 6 ships, including one of our missile cruisers, but it reflects that we have a position on the western shore of the Black Sea now, with Romania and Bulgaria as NATO members.

Add to this the Turkish control of the southern shore, Ukraine's control of the northwest, and Russia's lack of control of all of the east where we have the potential of having a presence in Georgia (not a NATO member but a friend).

Of course, I think air power from all these land areas is the best threat we can pose to Russia's control of the Black Sea. Even as Russia makes a play for influence in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, their power to exercise influence is a peacetime-only power.

If it comes to a shooting war, Russia's Black Sea military power will be fighting for its life and not worrying about supporting anything in the Mediterranean Sea.

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Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.

Of course, it is quite possible that my failure to use Facebook and Twitter has handicapped me in getting an audience. Or it may be an additional issue. I may be a blogosaur!